Week: Our Perspectives

Posts from the ISN, CSS and guest writers

The OSCE and Conventional Arms Control in Europe: Towards a Double Relaunch

OSCE Ministerial Council meeting opening in Vilnius, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Much has been written about the OSCE’s crisis. Much of it is true. Still, the future of this organization may be less grim than many predict. Current developments in Europe suggest that the role and relevance of the OSCE may actually grow in the years ahead.

For one thing, following the ambivalent outcome of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a conspicuous intervention fatigue among European publics. The ‘crisis’ of military crisis management is bound to exacerbate as the European debt crisis translates into shrinking defense budgets. There will likely be a shift towards more subtle, civilian, long-term approaches to conflict resolution and peacebuilding – the type of measures the OSCE has focused on.

Looking at the EU and NATO, there is also growing enlargement fatigue. This points to obvious limits to how far stability in Europe can be accomplished by expanding the Euro-Atlantic security community. By implication, the pan-European OSCE, with twice as many member states as the EU and NATO, is bound to gain traction again.

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Kyrgyz Secret Police to Monitor Web

Bits, bytes, and cyberspace
How secure is the Kyrgyz cyberspace? Photo: University of Maryland Press Releases/flickr.

Observers have questioned the need for Kyrgyzstan’s security service to monitor websites to identify hate speech.

The State Committee for National Security, or GKNB, is setting up a system to monitor the internet, with a particular focus on news sites with the .kg domain name, and plans to launch it in early autumn.

Using a web search engine that looks for certain words or phrases, the agency will seek to identify content liable to incite hatred on grounds of ethnicity, religion and even regional origin, in the wake of the ethnic violence that rocked southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010.

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Occupy the Hood: Leveraging Occupy in Minority Communities

Occupy The Hood
Occupy The Hood. Photo: democapitol/flickr.

In the first days of Occupy Wall Street’s Zuccotti Park phase, the protest was overwhelmingly homogenous. The movement was originally so dominated by white men that women in the group felt the need to form their own meetings—Fem GAs—in order to create a safe environment and open space for their concerns. Minority activists in New York City shared the concerns that the Occupy protests were ignoring crucial differences in the experiences of their audience, choosing instead to label all with an overwhelmingly white interpretation of “the 99 Percent.” African American and Latino activists were particularly worried about that organizing around the right to overtake a public space for long periods of time would detract from more sober public discussions of urban poverty and the effects of deepening austerity, while rhetoric surrounding police brutality towards protestors would distract from the daily trials minorities face in interactions with the police.

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Under the Radar: the Crisis in Madagascar

Rally against Andry Rajoelina's installation
Rally against Andry Rajoelina’s installation. Photo: r1_lita/flickr.

Isolated for around 80 million years, the island of Madagascar is home to hundreds of animals and plants that exist nowhere else in the world. A biodiversity hotspot of exotic fauna and flora, the Indian Ocean island is often likened to paradise. Yet Madagascar continues to be rocked severe economic and political crises – problems that remain largely unnoticed by Western audiences.

Ever since the 2009 ouster of its democratically elected president Marc Ravalomanana, Madagascar has been paralyzed by a political stalemate that has brought the already impoverished island of 20 million people to the brink of economic collapse. Although progress made in recent reconciliation talks has led to Western donors to gradually resume development aid, the road back to democracy promises to be a rocky one.

The political upheavals began after dissident army officers took power in what was regarded by the international community as a coup d’état. Officially, President Ravalomanana stepped down following violent street protests led by opposition leader Andry Rajoelina – a self-made dairy tycoon – and handed power to the military which in turn transferred its authority to Rajoelina. This prompted Rajoelina to declare himself as president of the “High Transitional Authority” (HAT) and consolidate a tight grip on the country’s politics. Ravalomanana, by contrast, fled into self-imposed exile in South Africa and was prevented twice from returning to Madagascar where he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for allegedly ordering the killing of protestors.

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Is NATO taking over the Arctic?

A U.S. Navy SEAL freefall parachute onto a frozen a lake in Northern Norway. Photo: Flickr/AN HONORABLE GERMAN

Five of the eight Arctic Council states are NATO members. So far, 2012 has also been a year where Swedes and Fins have moved closer toward full membership of alliance. If Sweden and Finland were to join, which seems plausible, NATO members would occupy 7 out of the total 8 seats in the Arctic Council.

In advance of this becoming reality the blogosphere has, over the last couple of months, been littered with conspiracy theories on secret plans for “Arctic war” between the NATO and the only non-NATO member in the Arctic Council, Russia.

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